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Paae 2/The Battalion/Tuesdav, October 11,1983
Family captive
of spreading
houseplants
by Art Buchwald
What happened was that a few years ago
people started giving us houseplants in
stead of cut flowers. The children gave
their mother a palm tree for Mother’s
Day; they gave me a philodendron for
Father’s Day and three dieffenbachias
for Christmas.
anybody there?” I thought I heard a voice
coming from the end of the table saying,
“You Tarzan, me Jane,” but it could have
been the wind. I looked up and saw one
of my children sitting in a branch of the
palm tree. “What are you doing up there?
Sit down and eat your dinner.”
My wife put them in the living room.
The relatives brought a snake plant a few
months later, and a friend presented us
with a fatsia plant which my wife put in
the library to help “cheer” it up.
She dutifully watered them and talked
to them and they started to grow... and
grow... and grow. Then she decided the
living room looked bare and bought
some grape ivy which she wrapped
around the fake balcony and some aspi
distras which she placed in the corner
near the television set.
Someone sent us a schefflera for an
anniversary, and friends who have a farm
in the Shenandoah trucked in two spider
plants which were rubber plants, and on
my birthday I was given a potted
elephant’s-ears all of my own. My daugh
ter, who was going away to college, asked
us if we would keep her weeping fig
plants while she was away, and someone,
I can’t remember who, sent us a box of
screw pines.
The house looked green and lovely for
a short while. But then a strange thing
happened. The plants kept getting larger
and larger. First they took over the living
room. We realized this when the man
who came to fix the TV set got lost and
was never heard from again. My wife
“Where can I sit?” she wanted to know.
“In your chair,” I said.
“I can’t find my chair,” she said.
“Do you think they’ll ever send a res
cue ship to find us?”
That night I said to my wife, “We’ve
got move out of the dining room. It’s not
safe to eat there any more.”
“They’re only plants,” she said.
“What about scorpions and snakes?
You can’t have that much foliage without
scorpions.”
We put some defoliant down between
the dining room and kitchen and started
to eat all our meals in the kitchen. Occa
sionally, a kangaroo vine or the grape ivy
tried to sneak in, but I kept an ax by my
side and every once in a while I chopped
off a length of it before it crawled to our
food.
My doctor warned me to stay out of
the library unless I wanted to take a gam
ble on catching malaria or yellow fever.
Despite out efforts to keep the plants
from getting into the kitchen, a yucca tree
crushed the door down and in a week the
kitchen was a forest.
One evening I lost my wife for four
hours, and only by luck stumbled over
her next to the Waring blender. Worse,
both the dog and the cat had become wild
and we decided to free them to live the
life of their ancestors, before they had
been domesticated by man.
wanted me to search for him, but I said to
her, “Are you kidding? That living
room’s a jungle.”
One Saturday I bought a machete and
tried to chop a trail through the living
room to my library. But after four hours I
realized it was hopeless. The more I hack
ed away, the faster the houseplants grew.
We closed off the living room.
We were sitting in the dining room
one evening when I noticed I couldn’t see
anyone at the table. It was an eerie feeling
as I shouted through the palm leaves: “Is
Two weeks later we moved everyone
up to the second floor of the house but
the plants followed us. At first we kept
them at bay by starting small forest fires
and removing the staircase, but the vines
began climbing the walls.
I am now writing this from our attic on
the third floor. If anyone reads this
please send help! We have enough food
to last us one more week. Tell the helicop
ter pilot we have a gray mansard roof.
That’s the only thing he can see from the
Glenn could have avoided angering feminists
by Arnold Sawislak
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Sen. John Glenn
got the raspberry when he told the Na
tional Organization for Women that the
Equal Rights Amendment failed in part
because its supporters were loafing while
its enemies were hustling to kill it.
Gongress approved the constitutional
amendment and sent it on to the state
legislatures for ratification in 1972. With
in a few years, more than 30 of the
The Ohio Democrat was right, but by
failing to put his comment into historical
context, he blew what to that point had
been a letter-perfect performance before
fei
the militant feminist organization.
needed 38 states had ratified the ERA
and its adoption as the 27th amemendent
to the Constitution before the bicenten
nial appeared assured. The ERA seemed
to have the momentum to win well before
the seven-year ratification period ex
pired in 1979.
It was about 1976 that Phyllis Schlafly
and other opponents really got organized
to fight the amendment. Their argu
ments — such claims that adoption of the
ERA would outlaw separate public toilets
for men and women — seemed so ex
treme and absurd to the amendment’s
supporters that for the most part they
declined to dignify them with rebuttals.
It is during this period — the mid-to-
late 1970s — that the ERA’s supporters,
in effect, leaned on their shovels. They
underestimated both the organizing and
propaganda-making ability of their
opponents. They overestimated the intel
ligence and political courage of the legis
lators in the few remaining states needed
for ERA ratification. That is the time
when it could truly be said that ERA sup
porters were loafing.
The nasty truth dawned about 1978
and it took a herculean effort to get an
additional three years to seek ratification.
NOW, which was new and weak when the
amendment was orginally approved by
Congress, had become a much more po
tent force by the end of the decade and
was at the forefront of the effort to get
the last few ratifications.
But it was too late
ERA became one of the
Opposition to the
e rallying points of
by E
Bate
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them becom
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including b
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the resurgent conservatism that led t|si corrie
limitation measures and the electioitl is[ e i son w j
Republican president and Senate, five years u
If Glenn had traced the historyt: Buivahnu^
ERA ratification battle and said its I classes i
ers had loafed after the first few yea®
successes in the states, the NOW4
gates — many of whom were teenara
1972 — would have nothing to comp|
about. But without that perspective]
comment could have been taken tom
the supporters had goofed off inti
last few years and to the women at Ml
they were fighting words.
The Battalion
Advice for wine servers: Make
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WASHINGTON — Fused to attend din
ner parties at the home of a woman who
quite vocally insisted that table wine be
opened in time for it to “breathe” before
it was served.
It will provide an indication of my slob
index when I confess that I then believed
my hostess was engaging in a bit of sub
urban snobbery.
Now I know better.
According to a wine column I was
reading recently, the only argument
among true connoisseurs is whether the
breathing should be natural, or electrical
ly stimulated.
Imbibers with sensitive palates who
like their wine well aspirated can, for a
mere $59.95, pick up a Wine Breather
that shoots a low voltage current into the
bottle.
A slight galvanization apparently does
for fermented grape juice approximately
what an oxygen mask does for football
players.
This device, according to the hype I
read, provides in just one minute the re-
spiratorial equivalent of a hour of un
assisted wine breathing. That’s assuming,
of course, that the wine you serve
breathes normally.
I’ve bought wine that was so short of
breath not even an Iron Lung would
help.
The wine I normally buy tends to gasp
rather than inhale and exhale in a rhyth
mic pattern.
It can be truly embarrassing to open a
bottle of wine for dinner and have it
arouse suspicions among the guests that
it is being axphyxiated.
In addition, wine that has been in the
bottle too long, or is of ancient vintage, is
likely to wheeze instead of breathe.
But that is nothing compared to the
chagrin you feel if the wine turns blue for
lack of oxygen. Particularly if it is sup
posed to be a white wine.
Worst of all is when the wine continues
to breathe after it has been swallowed.
Here’s a little tip that might stand you
in good stead at your next dinner party:
Before calling your guests to the table,
give the wine a little nudge to make cer
tain it is fully awake.
I also have found that it’s not always a
good idea to decant wine before serving.
Pouring wine from one container to
another causes it to undergo enough ex
ertion to start it huffing and puffing.
When you buy a wine like that, don’t
apologize for its breathlessness or try to
cover up for it by singing “O Sole Mio” or
some other aria. Instead, simply explain
to your guests that the wine is auditioning
for a role on the sound track of ap
movie.
Berry's World
lets see! im omt
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